For what it’s worth, this is the only article I can find that says it was for burning “plantations.”

From NBC News

The official said that while the weapon was not sanctioned by military leadership, the troops were fulfilling a legitimate military task of burning away thick shrubbery along the border where Hezbollah fighters sometimes hide.

Or, if you prefer an outlet with a different perspective…

From Middle East Eye

Israeli media suggested that launching projectiles into Lebanon was aimed at exposing Hezbollah fighters using the dense foliage as cover in the area. It could also be in preparation for a ground invasion.

It has a PWA option, which is pretty cool too!

I have a dual-hose portable AC, because my landlord sucks and won’t install something sensible like a mini-split. My biggest complaint is that the only mode that sucks in outside air relies running the inefficient and expensive AC. I’m in SoCal, so no cheap electricity for me. If I had the option I’d 100% rather install solar, but as a renter that is definitely not an option.

That said if I was purchasing one, I’d buy the one recommended by TheWirecutter. It uses a dual hose-in-hose design and is more power efficient than most models.

A version of that is on sale in the US from Sam’s Club for $375.

Wirecutter Link

Direct Link

Can you articulate why you don’t trust Proton? From everything I know, they have a stellar reputation and have been around since 2013 with no end in sight.

I’m stuck on Joplin personally, but have you taken a look at Standard Notes? I think it checks all your boxes.

https://standardnotes.com/help/self-hosting/getting-started

https://github.com/standardnotes/filesafe-relay

Here are some options I use in my rotation.

Brave Search (skip the browser)

Mojeek

Qwant (French)

Yandex (Russian)

Mullvad Leta (Mullvad VPN subscription required)

MetaGer (German meta search)

Startpage (Private Google results)

DuckDuckGo (Private Bing results)

SearXNG and similar self hosted options are awesome, but I’ve found them unreliable.

Be skeptical of Kagi… It’s promoted pretty heavily around here for something that’s not FOSS.

Not sure why you got downvoted like crazy, but Brave legitimately has a great search engine. It also uses its own crawlers unlike DDG, Startpage or Kagi who are really just meta search engines piggybacking off other companies’ results.

@rysiek Fair enough! Not official in the sense that the Bitwarden team doesn’t support it I suppose.

It definitely has some community backing though.

@rysiek

I believe Vaultwarden works with SQLite and Postgres if that were a concern.

https://github.com/dani-garcia/vaultwarden/wiki/Using-the-PostgreSQL-Backend

Bitwarden has a great free tier, it’s open source, and cross platform. I highly recommend it!

https://bitwarden.com/help/import-from-chrome/

If you want something that’s not cloud focused, check out KeepassXC too!

Ars Technica – Bias and Credibility

Bias Rating: Least Biased

Factual Reporting: High

Country: USA

MBFC’s Country Freedom Rating: Mostly Free

Media Type: Website

Traffic/Popularity: High Traffic

MBFC Credibility Rating: High Credibility

About MediaBiasFactCheck.com

Oh dang, you’re right. I used to use StaxRip back when I was doing more encoding and then finish with MKVToolNix, but I think the gui is Windows only.

Probably should have recommended Handbrake.

AAC is higher quality for the same compression level and generally preferred by Apple. MP3 should be fine too though.

EDIT: To be clear though, the programs I listed can handle all kinds of codecs including AAC and MP3. fre:ac is also good for ripping CDs if you’re into that sort of thing.

I’ll have to check it out. If you want to listen to Audiobooks specifically, I will say that the Open Source app BookPlayer has been fantastic for me.

If you really need to convert the files to something like AAC for native iPhone playback, I would suggest either fre:ac (audio only) or MKVToolnix (video and audio).

Installing VLC on your iPhone is probably the easiest solution. It should play the Opus files without any transcoding needed.

Still a work in progress from what I understand. The linked Axios article provides some additional context.

I for one find this to be a cool idea. Reducing the environmental impact of RFID tags seems small, but they are ubiquitous with billions of them produced annually. If this ends up being an economically viable and functional replacement I’m all for it. Less plastic waste and less e-waste is a good thing.

How on earth could Ukraine ever trust a peace deal with Russia? Putin has made it clear his word is worthless and therefore any agreement is meaningless.

Even with a 2022 “peace deal,” Russia would have continued the ”special operation” on their own timeline. Ukraine deserves to be made whole. Russia offered a false a truce because Ukraine started landing blows and fighting back.

Crazy thought, but maybe if the Iran backed militant groups don’t want their weapon stores bombed they should stop attacking the US Military?